


White Houses

by Yarpfish



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Agender!Jack, Alternate Universe -GTA AU, Angst, Bittersweet, Canon Typical Violence, Catharsism, Drug Addiction, Fake AH Crew, Gen, Multi, Rage Happy - Freeform, The Fake AH Crew, drug references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7869997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yarpfish/pseuds/Yarpfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘The Fake AH’, they’ll say.<br/>‘I wonder what happened to the Fake AH.’<br/>‘The crew that ruled Los Santos. They did the unimaginable, they tamed the city that couldn’t be tamed.’<br/>As quick as they came, as quick as they were the government, the police, the businesses, the very air you breathed, they were gone. Not shot out, not forced out, not busted, just…gone.<br/>One day, it was a month since their trademark violence made the news, and then two, then three, then a year. </p><p>What ever happened to the Fake AH?</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Houses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anarchetypal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchetypal/gifts).



> Inspired by Anarchetypal's wonderful headcanon for the worst case scenario for the Fake AH [[link]](http://anarchetypal.tumblr.com/post/127096587763/pssst-whats-your-worst-case-scenario-for-the-end)
> 
> Title and further inspiration from by [ White Houses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM3fEJyPrrg) by Vanessa Carlton

 

They started at the wrong place and at the wrong time.

They were all shady people, on the wrong side of the law, on the wrong side of rent. All in a shitty abandoned bungalow scheduled for demolition within a month, mattresses on the floor. Rust red water from the faucets that they‘d drink when they’d run out of cheap spirits and cheaper beer, and there’d been no under table favours that night.

First there was Geoff, who’d spent too many pay checks on whiskey instead of food. Disenchanted from dreams of patriotism and glory to a kid who should have known better, and unable to adjust back away from the heat and the rat-tat of bullets, who needed liquid oblivion to sleep at night, to forget.

Jack stopped going home, after one too many nights of screaming, of ducking thrown objects and thrown fists. Too many bruises and black eyes and ‘I fell down the stairs’. Left at fourteen with a backpack and a swiped wallet. They could slip into an Australian accent so good and so smoothly that it left them all wondering which voice was the fake.

Michael left New Jersey with the taste of addiction in his mouth and heroin still in his veins, terrified of what would happen if he’d stayed in the north. Likely just another skinny young punk who’d OD’d in a scummy bathroom in a pool of his own vomit. And yet here he is again, falling in with another kind of addiction, and he knows he is, knows he’s falling into something, anything to comfort him.

Gavin had come over for a job in an insurance fraud scheme that had been busted before his plane had even landed. But he couldn’t go back, not now. Not how he’d left, the bridges he’d burned. And so he blagged his way through customs, charming and daring, and somehow it worked. Tried to get to Hollywood and somehow Los Santos got in the way. Sometimes, in his sleep he cried a name.

Ray smoked too much. That he knew. Had been fucked over too many times by desperate, addict roommates, too many times of being kicked out because they were three months overdue on rent though he’d never missed a payment. Too many times of being woken in the middle of the night by gangs looking for their money. Guilty by association. He’d fallen for it too many times to do it again, and yet there he was, chasing the dream of an easy life.

Ryan was like Gavin and he was like Michael. He was running from the law and from who he is and who he was. There was a glint of fear in his eyes when he first arrived, almost hidden by the bright flash of manic hysteria that was always there. He didn’t mean to kill him, not really, it was just one push. They pieced some of it together but he never tells them, and they never ask.

And so they fall together for necessity, for need, for ease.

It’s nice not to feel so alone.

~*~

And shit they need food. No one’s eaten for days and there’s only so far you can go on bummed cigarettes. And then they’re at a gas station and half are distracting the cashier as the others lift Super Noodles and bread.

It’s as easy as breathing. It would be so easy to do it again, and again.

So they do.

One time, one of them brings knife. It’s just for show.

And then, a gun.

And then….

A cashier is brave. Some stupid, cocksure teenager who thought he could save the day.

Someone panics, actually shoots.

In the shock and the silence, someone says, “Let’s take the till”.

Someone smashes the CCTV.

And then they’re running, running with food and money and fucking who knows, whatever they could carry.

And then….

No one catches them. After a terrible, awful week hiding, too paranoid to even think about stepping out the front door, they remember how good it felt to be alive and running.

They could do this again.

So they do.

The smell of gunpowder and the sheen of fluorescent lights on blood pooling on dirty tiles soon loses its horror, becoming almost as addictive as the rush of adrenaline and the heaviness of the cash in their hands.

They go bigger and grow bolder.

And shit they seem to be getting pretty good.

~*~

Gas stations become jewellery stores become banks.

Backpacks full of fenced watches and a few hundred bucks of cocaine become _shipments_. ‘I know a guy’ evolves into _buyers_ and _contacts_.

It’s the strangest feeling in the world the first time someone comes to _them_ and asks for help, desperate to reach rent money.

~*~

At some point they get big enough that people start to ask for their name.

Someone snorts, “That makes it sound like we know what we’re doing.”

Someone else laughs, “Yeah, like we’re a real crew or something.”

 

Next he’s asked, Geoff calls them The Fake.

~*~

Five years later, somehow they own this city.

They own bars and brothels, senators and judges. In the dark alleys where they used to never dare walk, scarred men step back in respect, or try to shrink away afraid to be noticed. Smart men in smarter suits look to them in court rooms and boardrooms before they start to speak.

This pit of a city shakes, and it quivers and it bows to them. The moustache, the shirt, the brown leather jacket, the gold sunglasses, the hoodie, the black mask. Everyone knows what they are and what they mean and what they’ll do.

And it’s never going to end.

Gods eternal, us against the world.

But five years later, for all their power, for all the penthouse parties and sports cars and for all the money and the sex, they’re still the alcoholic, the runaway, the addict, the immigrant, the drop out, the murderer.

In spite of everything, they’re still six fuckups in a condemned bungalow.

~*~

One day, Ray mentions that he’s leaving.

Doesn’t give a reason.

Does it over the phone, on speaker.

Ray had never been much for this life. Hated the stress, the drama. He’d never been hooked on the adrenaline like they were. Just interested in the six figures he could bank at the end of a good night.

Last they hear is “I’m sorry”.

~*~

Gavin goes to LA a lot, does some filming. No one looks too closely at his fake ID, fake passport, fake visa. Not when he can get shots as good as that. Actors love him and editors call him the golden boy, claim there’s never a bad take when he’s behind the camera.

Meets a girl on the West Coast, very funny, very pretty.

She has a career over there.

Slowly, Gavin starts to never come back.

~*~

Michael is the same – he falls in love.

She can deal with his shit, she can give as good as she gets. She sees his bad moods and isn’t scared. She stands her ground when he shouts and swears, and isn’t impressed. Tells him to get over himself. More than anything, she gives him routine, and that’s a comfort.

Of the group, you could say Michael got the short straw. He was never as rich as the others, not in the long term.

He never tells Lindsay about the Fake, just the drugs. He goes back to being an electrician, does a show on his local radio for a hobby. That’s fine. Because he knows. He knows that one taste, one hit, is too many. He knows what he’s capable of and how easy it would be to fall back into being that person. Looking at her, for the first time in his life he doesn’t want to. So he makes sure he never has the chance.

The money that bought his consoles, his games, his radio gear, all of it’s saved from his shitty salary. His Swiss accounts he barely touches. Only tapped once, to pay for everything on his wedding day. Says it’s a present from an old aunt.

That money is secret from everyone, but in a rare display of responsibility, he hires expensive lawyers and writes a water-tight will, has everything defaulting to Lindsay.

Just in case.

~*~

Over the years, a handful of times, someone recognises Ryan.

“James!” they would call out, some with warmth, some with surprise, some with a tenseness in the jaw and a smile that didn’t reach their eyes. All tinged with pity. Ryan would always go and speak to them, voice low and shoulders high and tense.

They would watch on the news every time they discovered the body of someone who had once known Ryan as James.

~*~

Ryan had never really been theirs.

Even at their height, he would wander away, do his own thing without a word or explanation.

Ryan was running.

Even when he didn’t move, Ryan was always running away.

The fear and frenzy never quite left his eyes.

And as the lads slowly ebbed away, it was like they no longer had the gravity to keep him close.

~*~

It’s difficult to say whether Jack left Geoff or Geoff left Jack.

But it’s easy to know that it’s like how it started, just the two of them. Then all of them. And then suddenly no one at all.

They still had an impressive empire, but now it felt more like a chore than a pride. Like that mobile game you had loved, but now you just didn’t care. You didn’t care and you forgot and when you remembered it was with impatience and micro-transactions because you just couldn’t be bothered.

They happened to be out of town at the same time. Vacation; visiting family.

And they just….didn’t come back.

~*~

But yet,

They all did. All six.

To pick up things that escaped that first pass of “I’ll be back soon.”

Somehow they all missed each other.

They all walk through the gradually emptying house and tell themselves this was temporary, that it didn’t feel like more a crypt, emptied and robbed, each time.

 

Ironically, fittingly, naturally, the last one to visit the house is Ray.

~*~

When the LSPD raid the penthouse a year later, it was a sadly domestic dusty.

Some clothes are gone, favourite pieces taken early on in carry-on luggage, but most of the closets stay closed, full.

There were bug out bags everywhere, some untouched, others with one or two things missing. A box of band aids, a cliff bar, a knife.

Six half empty shampoo bottles still in the shower, rotten milk in the fridge. There’s a piece of bread in the toaster still, someone distracted halfway through breakfast. A Steven Seagal movie still in the DVD player. A bed unmade, a towel on the floor. There was laundry in baskets and something in the dishwasher.

It’s not picked clean. It’s not a sterile apartment of a crew who’s moved on, bleach sharp in the air and no hope of prints, DNA. And it’s not the panicked rush of people who needed to leave soon, leave _now_ , mess everywhere, objects knocked over, stupid things overlooked.

No, it’s the lazy sorting out of people who mean to come back for the rest, they really do, but they’ll take the important things for now.

It’s a place where they always meant to go back to, but then they never did.

~*~

‘The Fake AH’, they’ll say.

‘I wonder what happened to the Fake AH.’

‘The crew that ruled Los Santos. They did the unimaginable, they tamed the city that couldn’t be tamed.’

As quick as they came, as quick as they were the government, the police, the businesses, the very air you breathed, they were gone. Not shot out, not forced out, not busted, just…gone.

One day, it was a month since their trademark violence made the news, and then two, then three, then a year.

 

What ever happened to the Fake AH?

~*~

And then, life moved on. The Fake AH became the boogieman in the night.

And then the boogieman was forgotten. Their tags were painted over.

No one knew what the bullseye duck meant anymore. Wiped out by other gangs, or stupid kids with spray paint, or the city’s power hose.

~*~

They all had photos. Of course they did.

Photos that they’ll never look at because of the guilt, because of the loneliness, because of the way they make the corner of their lips curl up involuntarily into sad, fond smiles. Memories that are too painful to look at because they were the good times. Photos that they’ll never look at, but never ever delete.

Except Ryan. Ryan doesn’t have photos, but he has scars. Silver and pink reminders of bygone firefights. When he threw himself into the fray, hoping to kill, and maybe hoping to die, he wore his scars like a scrapbook.

~*~

Sometimes a song will come on the radio, something random. Something terrible from the 90s. Something that everyone knows the words, and sings along to badly. Lindsay doesn’t understand why, but sometimes Michael goes very quiet and changes the station.

~*~

Sometimes Gavin will laugh and start a sentence, “hey, would you rather,” before frowning, “never mind”. He gets very testy when people tease him for his accent.

~*~

A purple hoodie sits on a closet floor, wrapped tight around something large and heavy.

~*~“

Hey, cool tattoo,” a naïve stranger asks “what’s it mean?”

Jack slapped a hand over their forearm.

“Nothing”, they said tersely.

~*~

“Geoff Ramsey?” said the tattooed man at the bar, his face five days from clean shaven, the ice in his glass of water starting to melt.

 

“No, I’ve never heard of him.”


End file.
